and the dreams that have faded
by vigilantism
Summary: Yuna dreamed of him long before anyone revealed that she wasn't the only one dreaming of him.


Yuna dreamed of him long before anyone revealed that she wasn't the only one dreaming of him. She dreamed of him not long after they met, though it was only in quick flashes and in scenery she didn't understand at the time.

She dreamed of him after the Blitzball tournament in Luca, rising up and out of the Blitzball sphere, suspended in mid-air as if there were nothing tying him to the earth, as if he might fly away and disappear at any moment. She woke just as he crashed back down into the suspended water, and it left her feeling disconcerted and out of sorts, though she could not say just why.

She dreamed of him lying on the beach with the Crusaders, next to Gatta. She imagined dancing above them, ruins and wreckage all around them, people crying. When she finished her dance, Gatta was gone, but he…wasn't. He sat up, yawned, and smiled at her as if there was nothing horrible going on in the world around them. She found herself smiling back, though it hurt to do so. What would he do, when she was not there to dance any longer? She hoped he would be happy to live in peace, and she couldn't bring herself to tell him the truth.

She dreamed of him the night they spent in the Guado Woods, after Lord Seymour had asked her to marry him, but that was a dream she did not wish to share with others.

She did not sleep much after the incident in Macalania Temple, and when she did, there was nothing pleasant about her dreams.

She could not stay awake forever, of course. In Bevelle, waiting for a wedding that she wanted to end in a Sending, she dreamed of him and the Moonflow. They had not gotten to wait and see it, and of course she knew they never would. But she dreamed of it anyway, and she woke happy when the guard came to fetch her, despite the fear of how the day would go.

When they returned to Macalania at long last, she did not need to dream of him anymore because he was there, beside her, arms around her. There was so much she wanted from him, so much she wanted to share and to be and to do, but she could not abandon Spira to the death that Sin would bring to them. With her resolve settled, and with him beside her even now that he knew the horrible truth of what she was setting out to do, she did not need to dream anymore. She felt awake and alive, and that mattered more than she could have put words to.

The night before they reached Zanarkand proper, she could not sleep. She didn't _want_ to dream – of him, of happiness, of Sin or Seymour or anything at all. He came up behind her, wordlessly, having wasted all his words telling the story they'd all been a part of. She felt as if there were some crucial thing about what he had said – something learned or gleaned in one of the Cloisters somewhere – which she didn't quite grasp. She wanted to ask him, but her words, too, had run dry. She stood there in the setting sun, on the edge of the ruined city that would be the last place she ever visited, and wished the dream they were living didn't have to end.

As it turned out, his story and her dream did _not_ end in Zanarkand.

After that she felt lost, directionless. How could they defeat Sin now? Had she really condemned all of Spira, when all she had wanted her whole life was to save it? She couldn't believe that. She _wouldn't_ believe that.

They travelled again, with the aid of the airship this time, thinking of how to beat Sin now that Lady Yunalesca's twisted summoning ritual was no more. They didn't sit idle, of course. There were more Fayth out there, waiting in strange places around the world. Even Seymour's Aeon was out there. Though Yuna was a little apprehensive about facing the Fayth that had once been Lord Seymour's mother, her fears ultimately proved unfounded. She obtained the Aeon known as Anima, with a mother's wish to stop her son's dark ambitions. Eventually, though, there were no more Fayth to visit, and no more stalling to be done. They _had_ to face Sir Jecht; they had to face Sin and defeat it, once and for all.

No dreams, no nightmares, could have prepared Yuna for the ending. It hit her, then, what the Fayth had been saying, about dreams. She stood shocked, watching the dream she'd fought hard to hold on to slip through her hands, through her _body_ , and disappear off the edge of the ship.

After that, she talked herself out of having dreams. It hurt too much, to think that her favorite dream had really been nothing more than that.

When she started dreaming of him again, just before she was slated to give a speech as the first High Summoner to actually live, she wondered if she was wrong, and if there was something real there after all.

Lulu didn't say anything when she found Yuna whistling across the water at the dock in Luca. She told her only that it was time, and let her follow when she would.

Afterward, she had the same dream. Not every night. Not even every week. But the dream would come to her in flashes, repeating images of his face and the water. Sometimes she saw the Farplane. Sometimes she saw the pool that spheres were made from, in Macalania Woods. Sometimes she saw other things. Zanarkand, maybe? The places changed, but the dream was the same: he swam toward her, arms outstretched, smiling. She was running toward him, waiting, knowing he'd be there. But she woke before he reached her, before she could even see his face in front of her. She saw him only from far away, dreaming, dreaming.

Whenever she was near the ocean, alone, she would whistle. Part of her wanted to think that if she tried hard enough that she, like the Fayth, could bring dreams into reality. But though she was High Summoner, she was not one of the Fayth, and her prayers remained unanswered.

Weeks turned into months, sliding by and eventually turning into a year. And another. And still, Yuna dreamed, and prayed, and whistled.

The day she finally heard his return whistle, even she didn't believe it at first. Rikku told her she was hearing things, though she was nice about it. Paine didn't say anything at all. It was Brother who actually encouraged her, telling her he'd follow the sound she heard to wherever it was. Yuna stood on the deck of the airship, holding on, holding her breath as they approached the familiar ocean around Besaid. And there in the water, he was waiting. Not a dream, not a hallucination.

Awake, and alive.

She was in his arms before she could think anything else, bare arms holding tight to him, taking in everything she could feel. In dreams, even if she could touch him, he didn't feel like anything. He felt like he had when she'd fallen through him on the airship after they'd defeated Sin. But he was solid now, solid like he'd been before the Fayth had stopped dreaming him.

If it was the power of her dreams that had brought him back, then she promised she'd never ever stop dreaming.

"You told me always," she said, half into his hair.

"Yeah. Sorry about that, Yuna. I had to pause always for a little while."

"No more pauses?" she asked, pulling back and looking up at him with her odd-colored eyes.

"No more pauses," he promised.

"Always," she said.

"Always, then," he agreed.


End file.
